Assessing Changes in US Government Funding for International Health

We integrated publicly available fiscal and budgetary data to assess historical and prospective U.S. international health funding commitments in relation to relevant benchmarks.

The results suggest that adjusted historical growth rates for critical funding priorities like child survival, maternal and child health and women's reproductive health and family planning significantly under-perform relevant benchmarks.

The prospective outlook for U.S. international health funding at all levels is challenging. Competition for scarce discretionary resources, competing policy priorities, and protracted fiscal pressures will make it difficult for U.S. international health contributions to fully meet the significant expenditure requirements needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Moreover, changes in relative funding composition raise difficult questions that may require further study among donor community members.